the election results are pretty consistent. the american public is ready for a modest increase in taxes for the upper 2% of taxpayers. having said that, there's another issue that's coming up in february or march and that's raising the debt ceiling once again. the republicans have a lot of leverage on that right now because the white house, the administration will desperately want to raise that debt ceiling so the u.s. doesn't go into default. that could undermine u.s. creditworthiness, u.s. interest rates, all that kind of stuff, and the republicans will have some serious leverage there down the road. both sides have leverage. my bottom line in the short run, the democrats have some more. >> so it sounds and before we even get to that very valuable piece of leverage, the debt ceiling discussions, it's odd that it would seem as though the democrats would benefit from heading over the fiscal cliff because then it's the marketing message of who was to blame for it. all the while though, wolf, there are all those calamitous cuts t